Berlin: A Novel (3 page)

'There you are.' Ben greeted him reproachfully. 'Where's your place in the queue?'

'Behind that woman with the green headscarf.' Ralf let the kitten go and strolled away. Reluctantly, Ben took his slot in the queue. He hated standing in line.

He cut the waiting short by imagining a man in a white jacket with a steaming pan full of sausages slung on a tray in front of him, like that time on the Wannsee bathing beach. He had been very small then, and it was before the war. He could almost hear the squelch as the man squirted mustard on the paper plate from a squeezy bottle. It made a delightfully rude noise.

His mother arrived around six. Gritscher the master cobbler had repaired Ralf's sandals for the umpteenth time. 'That man works miracles,' she told the woman next to her. 'Off you go and do your homework,' she said, turning to her son. And take your brother with you.'

'What'll it be, Frau Dietrich?' Winkelmann beamed at her over the counter, looking healthy and well fed. He had direct access to all good things.

A loaf of bread, 150 grams of powdered egg and the extra margarine ration. Can you let me have the powdered egg as an advance on next week's rations?'

'I'll have to ask the boss about that. Come here a moment, will you, Frau Kalkfurth?'

Martha Kalkfurth had dark hair with strands of grey in it, and a smooth, round, ageless face with a double chin. She sat heavily in her wheelchair, steering it skilfully past sacks of dried potato and cartons filled with bags of ersatz coffee.

'Can Frau Dietrich have 150 grams of powdered egg in advance?'

'Please, Frau Kalkfurth, it's only until Monday when the new ration cards begin.'

Martha Kalkfurth shook her head. 'No special favours from me, even if your husband is with the police.' She turned the wheelchair and went back into the room behind the shop.

Ben found his brother outside the Yanks' ice cream parlour. One of the soldiers was leaning down to hand him a large portion of ice cream. Ralf was a successful beggar; few could resist his angelic face. The two boys scooped up the chocolate and vanilla ice on their way home, using the wafers that came with it. Life was OK.

The soft strains of'Starlight Melody' drifted out of Club 48, combining with the tempting aroma of grilled steaks to arouse impossible longings in the Germans hurrying by. The US Engineers had put the building together from prefabricated components in three days, and within a week it was completely fitted out with a kitchen, cocktail bar, tables and dance floor.

The commandant of the American sector of Berlin, a two-star general from Boston, had handed over the club to the private soldiers and NCOs, dancing the first dance with his wife before withdrawing with relief to the nearby Harnack House. where the commissioned officers and upper ranks of civilian staff drank dry martinis.

Jutta Weber, a pretty blonde aged thirty, worked in the kitchen of the Club. She peeled potatoes, washed dishes. and heaved around the heavy pots and pans used by Mess Sergeant Jack Panelli and his cooks to concoct hearty, unsophisticated dishes from their canned and frozen supplies.

At just before eleven she set off for home. Her bicycle light barely illuminated her way back along Argentinische Allee. The buildings were in darkness; there would he no electricity in this part of town until three in the morning. The coal shortage and the state of the turbines in the city power stations, half of them destroyed in air raids, made power rationing essential. Next came Steglitz. A pedestrian emerged from the darkness. Jutta rang the bicycle bell on her handlebars, making a shrill sound, but he kept coming straight at her. She swerved, caught the edge of the pavement with her front wheel and lost her balance. For a moment she lay there in the road, helpless. Headlights approached. lighting up the face above her for a fraction of a second. The lenses of a large pair of goggles flashed. Then the face disappeared into the darkness again.

An open jeep stopped. The driver jumped out. 'Everything OK?' He helped her to her feet, and she recognized a captain's insignia and the Military Police armband. He was very tall, about one metre ninety, she guessed.

'Everything OK,' she told him. 'I'm on my way home. I work at the FortyEight.' She showed him the ID card allowing her, as a German employee of the army, to be out after curfew. Somewhere nearby the engine of a motorbike started up. The sound rapidly receded.

'Your light's not very strong. Easy to miss an obstacle.' Obviously he hadn't noticed the man with the goggles. 'I'll take you home.'

'There's really no need,' she protested, but he had already lifted her bike into the back of the jeep, and she had no choice but to get in.

'Where do you want to go?'

'Straight ahead, then right into Onkel-Tom-Strasse.'

He started the engine. She glanced at him, but couldn't make out his face beneath his helmet in the darkness. Are you always so late going home?' He had a calm, masculine voice that inspired trust. A bit like Jochen, she thought sadly.

'I never finish before eleven, except on Wednesdays, when I get off at seven.'

'You want to he very careful at night. You never know who may be prowling around in the dark.' He turned into Onkel-Tom-Strasse. Number 133 was one of the two-storey apartment buildings on the right, painted in bright colours in the twenties by an architect with gaudy tastes. He helped her out of the jeep and lifted her bike down.

'Thanks, captain. You were a great help.'

'It was a pleasure, ma'am.' He touched his hand to his white helmet.

Nice American, she thought. She opened the front door of the building, locked it from the inside, and took her bike down to the cellar, where she secured it with a padlock and chain. Then she went quietly upstairs. The little dynamo lamp hummed as she switched it on.

The top apartment on the left had fallen vacant when the Red Army marched in and its tenant, a Nazi local group leader, shot his wife and himself. It had three rooms. The Konigs and their twelve-year-old son HansJoachim, Hajo for short, lived in one. Jutta had the room next to theirs, and the Housing Department had given the room opposite to Jurgen Brandenburg, just released from a POW camp, a small, dark-haired man in his late twenties who wore clothes made from blue Luftwaffe fabric.

The door of the Konigs' room was open. 'Come on in, Frau Weber, sit down, this is just getting interesting,' cried Herr Konig, in high spirits. He poured out some potato schnapps. 'From my brother's secret still. He has an allotment garden in Steglitz. Like a little drink?'

'No, thank you, Herr Konig.'

'Well, where were we, captain?'

Brandenburg's dark glasses for the blind reflected the candlelight. Hands tilted at an angle, he was demonstrating one of his countless fights in the air. 'So the Englishman comes down from the clouds. A two-engine Mosquito. Dangerous craft, that, with three guns on board. I swerve aside. He dives down past me, it takes him a moment to regain height. I wait for him to climb past me. then I rake his underside. Ratatatat - boing - bull'seye! He's flying round me in a thousand pieces. My twenty-fifth victory in the air. I got the Knight's Cross for it -- presented by him personally.'

'Bravo!' Herr Konig was beside himself. 'The Knight's Cross. Think of that, Frau Weber.'

Jutta's reaction was icy. 'I'd rather think about how it's all over now, and he is frying in hell instead of handing out gongs. Haven't you men had enough of this rot, with your murderous games of cowboys and Indians?'

Brandenburg leaped to his feet. 'I'm not taking that about rot!'

'Then don't talk it, OK? Goodnight, everyone.' In her room she lit a candle and took it into the bathroom to clean her teeth. The strong-tasting American dentifrice concealed the horrible chlorine flavour of the tapwater. As she fell asleep she pictured Jochen in her mind's eye. He had been killed at the very beginning of the war. The men's voices next door rose in excitement. She wondered, bitterly, Will it never end?

The motorcyclist was disappointed and angry. He had watched his victim for days before deciding she was worthy. Carefully, lovingly, he had chosen her from among a number of blonde, blue-eyed candidates. Not everyone passed the test.

He had been so close to her, and then the jeep ruined everything. Who knew how long he'd have to wait for another opportunity?

He took every precaution, but he had nothing to fear at this time of night. Unseen, he put the bike back in its hiding place, where he also kept the goggles, gauntlets and leather helmet. The rest of his route was hidden in darkness. It was not far to his home.

He went straight to bed, put out the light and waited patiently for the dream. It was always the same: he sank deep into the chosen one's blue eyes, stroked her long blonde hair, kissed her beautiful full lips as she opened them to him. She sighed as he penetrated her. He was a wonderful lover, with strength and stamina. But when he woke up he was an awkward fool again, a clown who had no idea how to approach a girl.

It had been like that with Annie. Annie, blonde and blue-eyed, who worked in Brumm's Bakery and Cake Shop opposite the U-Bahn station. He spent endless Sunday afternoons sitting in the front garden of the cafe, ordering countless cups of coffee and pieces of cake, following every move she made with his eyes. He financed his generous tips from the till of the family business. She said, 'Thank you very much, sir,' nicely, and bobbed a little curtsey. He didn't realize that she was laughing at him.

He gave her flowers and chocolate and a pair of silk stockings, but she just laughed. 'You're out of your league, kid!' His pink, youthful face belied his age: he was twenty-five. But the diamond ring from his mother's jewel box made a difference. She put it on her finger and said, 'Come up and see me tomorrow evening.' She had an attic room above the cake shop.

He arrived from work on his motorbike late that Monday. still dressed in his butcher's overall. She was ready, waiting for him. Her naked body shone pale in the light of the big candle beside the bed. He stood there with arms dangling, not daring to touch her: not knowing where to look. She helped him out of his overall. Something clinked. 'What's that, then?' Embarrassed, he showed her the cattle chain he'd left in his pocket by mistake.

Quick-fingered, she undressed him. When she saw his tiny prick she spluttered with laughter. All the same, she tried hard. But it was no good, he was too tense. Shrugging her shoulders, she gave up. 'Come back when you've grown up, little sissy!' she mocked him as she dressed.

He didn't want to hurt her. He only wanted her to be his. That was the deal. He grabbed hold of her. She resisted and kicked out at him, like a calf resisting slaughter. He reached for the chain that had tamed so many recalcitrant animals. She soon stopped resisting. He pulled her panties down and took her by force, using the candle in its holder as a substitute for his manhood, imaging her stertorous breathing to be the sound of orgasm. An overwhelming climax shook him as he rooted about in her, letting her go only when she stopped moving.

No one saw him carry her out into the front garden in the dark and sit her at one of the tables, her dress pulled up to show her bloodstained sex. He wanted people to know he had possessed her. He removed the ring from her finger.

It had been like that the first time, and it was the same whenever his craving grew too strong and there was only one way to satisfy it: with a young, blonde, blue-eyed woman and a cattle chain.